Feed is often cited as the first limiting constraint to livestock intensification in smallholder mixed-crop farming systems in developing countries.

However attempts to deal with the feed constraint tend to focus on promotion of a fairly standard set of feed technologies with often disappointing results. Our experience is that feed intervention failures can be traced to three main issues:

To address these three key issues, in 2012,ILRI and some of its international and national partners tested and refined emerging tools for feed resource and demand assessment, value chain analysis, rapid market appraisal and feed technology prioritization. The idea is that these will be taken up and used in CGIAR Research Programs – notably Livestock and Fish, Dryland Systems, and Humidtropics.

In addition to organizations recognized for specific projects and outputs, we thank all donors which globally supported the work of ILRI and its partners through their contributions to the CGIAR system

This web site is about research on animal feeding, fodder,and forages at ILRI.